Glad We Skipped Hanalei Bay This Memorial Day Weekend. Here’s Why.

Memorial Day morning on Kauai is beautiful. Hanalei looks like the postcard visitors expect. This is the first weekend of what we anticipate will be another busy summer at BOH’s home beach, and most years we would be on the way. This time, we are not going.

That probably sounds backward if you flew here hoping for this exact Memorial Day beach day, but a shark advisory went up at the bay yesterday afternoon, and our resident read on this holiday morning said to skip it.

The shark sign was not the whole story.

By yesterday afternoon, there was one more reason to pause. Kauai Ocean Safety posted warning signs after a six- to seven-foot shark was sighted near the Pavilion Lifeguard Tower around 2:15 p.m.

Lifeguards will reassess conditions this afternoon. And if there are no additional sightings, ocean activities could resume around the same time today. We’ll see.

Once a shark sign goes up, Hanalei starts having the conversation it always has. Someone studies the water as if they were about to solve it from shore; someone says the shark is probably more scared of us than we are of it; and both residents and visitors decide whether this changes the day or just becomes part of its story.

For visitors, that sign can hit on a Memorial Day beach day planned months ago. For residents, it comes on a holiday weekend, so we were already reading with traffic and beach congestion caution.

The postcard version of Hanalei does still exist.

Hanalei is still Hanalei. Nearly two miles of crescent beach, the mountains, the pier, that big, wide open-bay feeling, and the reason it has often been named among the world’s top beaches. Dr. Beach has called it one of the best in America. Travel and Leisure called it the crown jewel of Kauai. All of that is still sitting out there beautifully this morning. But as for the water, the place can look perfect, but still not be the right day to go in.

We covered another Hanalei shark closure last summer in part because advisories like this are just life on life’s terms at Hanalei Bay. We have written about this bay for nearly two decades, walked it, swum it, paddled it, and sat on it through more seasons than we can count. We have watched the bay through floods, high surf, brown water, glassy mornings, rescue calls, overcrowded weekends, and those late afternoons when the place empties out and remembers what it used to feel like. The beach changes day to day, hour to hour, and the version people, including us, carry around in their heads is only one of them.

The weekend version is a different animal.

Memorial Day at Hanalei Bay is its own thing. The Black Pot extension added a grassy area and more parking, but the bathrooms are still the portable units that replaced the ones that had not worked in a long time. There is the new portable bathroom setup, too, which is a whole other story. In any event, temporarily, forever it seems, those will be supplemented by many sad portable units.

Coolers come out, beach chairs and tents go up, visiting friends and relatives arrive, and every group looks like it has been planning this day for months. That is what happens when one of the world’s most photographed beaches hits a holiday weekend with good weather, and the loved-to-death frame we have been writing about for years gets its first big test of the summer season.

Residents read the beach somewhat differently because we can go back Tuesday, or Thursday, or some random day next week or next month, when the beach has room again and no sharks. By the time a shark sign enters the picture, many people’s decisions have already been made.

Even if the signs come down mid-afternoon, Memorial Day in Hanalei still brings traffic, crowded parking, packed beach access, and the feeling that everybody is trying to squeeze the most out of every vacation hour they have left.

Visitors do not have that much choice. Their beach days are attached to flights home, hotel reservations, work schedules, family obligations, and the reality that they may not be back on Kauai for years, if ever. Residents can wait.

Memorial Day on Kauai when you live here.

There is a strange freedom in skipping famous places on the very morning visitors may be most determined to visit them. Hanalei will still be there after the holiday weekend ends.

So that is our Memorial Day this morning for two Kauai residents, looking at a beautiful holiday morning and deciding Hanalei Bay sounds better on Tuesday.

Have you ever skipped a famous Hawaii place because the timing, the crowds, the surf, the parking, or the mood just felt wrong? Tell us in the comments.

Photo Credit: © Beat of Hawaii at Hanalei Bay on Kauai.